Great. Another music blog. (2005-2013)

365 Days, 365 Files: Asylum Street Spankers – Superchief

I haven’t been to an Asylum Street Spankers show in years, and I’ve heard tell the ensemble has embraced the "demon electricity". Well, then …

In the early days, Asylum Street Spankers cut its teeth by eschewing amplification, and the group was large enough to produce a big sound. For its first album, the Spankers set up two microphones and recorded in an old house in East Austin. Given the band’s classic American sound, the grainy quality of the album perhaps best encapsulates the Spankers’ muse.

This is ol’ time music recorded in an ol’ time manner.

Asylum Street Spankers are one of the few bands that sound best when captured live, but given the style of music the band plays — anywhere from jazz to blues to country to territorial Hawaiian — too much technology would get in the way.

"Superchief" is one of the first tracks on Spanks for the Memories, and yet it only represents a fraction of the Spankers’ breadth.